How to Get Your Banner Ad Noticed

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Hey, look at me! Click here!

Problem is, people see that message in various forms at so many websites that they hardly notice it. The term banner blindness was coined in 1998 to describe how website users tend not to see banner ads that are on the page in front of them. While click-though rates vary, they're often under one percent.

On the other hand, because of their lower click-through rates, banner ads can cost less than other forms of online advertising, making them a cost-effective advertising option when they work.

With the array of online advertisements competing for people's attention, how can you make your banner ads stand out? Web hosting provider explains...

Know your target audience

Teens, mothers, people in a specific industry or social group, and senior citizens, for example, will respond differently to different types of ads. Do you want your ads to be conservative? Sensational? Prestigious? What emotions and needs do you want to appeal to?

Start with what you already know about your target audience. Look at your company's advertising history with the same target audience and various types of advertising, and note what did and didn't work.

To learn more, recruit people who fit your target audience profile to look at various types of banner ads. Ask them what they like and don't like about each ad: layouts, fonts, colors, content, and anything else. When a pattern in their preferences develops, you'll have useful information to use at the banner design stage.

Know your advertising goal

Is your goal to sell a particular product or service? Increase brand awareness? Overcome any negativity surrounding your product or brand?

For the banner to help with sales, it needs to get people's attention, make them want to click on it, and lead to a relevant landing page. To help sell a particular product or service, it needs to focus on that product or service.

Banner ads primarily for brand awareness can be more general but still must convey a suitable image and message for your target audience. If the ads are to counter negativity, they should focus on the concerns that need to be overcome.

Decide how to advertise

As a banner ad advertiser, you have a few advertising options:

• Find individual banner ad publishers yourself and pay to have your banner displayed at their sites.
• Pay a banner ad network to have your banner appear on a potentially large number of websites.

These options apply if you offer banner advertising at one or more of your sites:

• Enter into banner ad agreements with other publishers.
• Join a banner exchange program.

Choosing who to advertise with yourself provides the assurance that your banners will appear at sites suited for your target audience, and you can also see what content your banner will appear next to. With a banner ad network, you risk having your banner appear at some less suitable sites. On the other hand, you have the convenience of having it appear at many sites without your having to research those sites yourself, and you can monitor its performance at all those sites at once.

Have your banner designed professionally

Unless your banner design skills are at a professional level, hire a professional banner designer. If you don't have the advertising knowledge, design skills, and creativity to design an effective, targeted ad, you could be wasting the money you spend displaying that banner. Share your knowledge of your target audience with your designer.

Effective banner ads have some or all of these features:

Banner ad appearance

• They load fast.
• They have both visual and text elements with a contrast between them.
• Their appearance is uncluttered.
• The visual part of the ads include a metaphor, such as sunshine in a laundry ad (implying that your clothing will be as clean as sunshine if you use the product).
• They're designed with the target audience in mind.
• They have a hook to get viewers' attention. The visual part may be the hook, or words such as free can work as a hook.
• They're animated. According to some (but not all) studies, animated ads have a higher success rate than static ads do.

Banner ad location

• They're on pages with related content.
• They're at sites that your target audience visits.
• They're positioned above the fold.

Banner ad content

• They advertise a specific product or service and link to a page about that product or service.
• They have a simple message that's easy to take in at a glance and remember.
• The text part is short — probably under eight words — and includes power words such as affordable.
• Their content is relevant and interesting to their audience.
• They have a specific offer and a clear benefit, for example, Join today and save. They give viewers a reason to click on them.
• They're truthful and believable.
• They include a call to action, such as Buy now or Act now.

Test different banner designs

Click-through rates and conversions measure in part the effectiveness of ads. To find out if your ad could be more effective, have different versions of your banner created and run them at different times. Some possible differences to measure:

• Leave out some elements that are in another version.
• Use different sizes and colors of an image in the banner.
• Use a noticeably different font.
• Include different text or a different call to action.

When testing different designs, be sure that the differences are big enough to make a difference. With similar banners, change only one variable at a time.

You can also test very different versions of banners. For example, if you want to take some risks with a banner design, run it and one that's more within the usual bounds. If the risky one doesn't do well, you can always replace it with the safer version.

Related articles

• Getting Started with Online Advertising
• Forget Pay-per-Click: Pay for Performance

Is Microsoft the Next Big SEM? More Features, More Detailed Metrics, Stiff Competition

Web Hosting Provider Explains...

Microsoft is the johnny-come-lately to search engine marketing with Google and Yahoo owning in excess of 70% of the search engine marketing segment - web hosting provider explains. That means that Microsoft’s adCenter Add-In, a plug-in module for Excel, becomes a search engine player, albeit a rookie with a lot to learn.. And the adExcellence accreditation program for advertisers and a brand new webmaster center make Microsoft’s efforts to start climbing the mountain, at least appear, to be effective.

Microsoft’s adCenter

One of the strongest features of adCenter is its ability to target narrow, very specific markets. This includes geo-targeting, run time targeting and demographics targeting in which you determine target parameters. It’s a level of SEM specificity that you won’t find with Google Analytics, though give Google a week or two to catch up. (Isn’t competition wonderful?)

Add Center Add In

Slated for release in January, ’08, Add In equips users to conduct detailed and accurate keyword searches while planning advertising models within Excel. User-defined attributes include projected volume (based on historical performance), relevance to the user’s query and information on costs, again based on historical performance.

A lot of site owners employ Excel to manipulate keyword data generated by third parties so the move on Microsoft’s part to create an Add-In that integrates with the users’ keyword tool makes excellent sense, enabling years of research to remain relevant. In other words, your existing Excel metrics retain utility.

Add-In is, first, a keyword analytics tool, but it does much more, providing data on KPIs for specific keywords within a defined time (24, 48 hours, e.g.), number of impressions within a user-defined time, click-through rate, cost per click and demographic data such as age, gender and location of site visitors. These capabilities simplify the process of calculating seasonal effects on traffic or predicting outcomes for various keywords before they’re actually put in place.

adExcellence

This is Microsoft’s answer to Google’s Professional Advertising and Yahoo Ambassador programs, identifying agencies and advertisers that have become regular, successful users of the adCenter platform – a credential that identifies proficiency with this search marketing program.

The Microsoft Webmaster Center

The Webmaster center was launched in September, 2007. To date, Webmasters have been less than impressed when the features offered by Webmaster Center are stacked up against Google’s extensive arsenal of webmaster tools. The point, at least as far as webmasters and site owners is concerned, is that Microsoft must move quickly to provide the metrics analysis available through its main competitor and 800-pound gorilla named Google.

Is It Too Late for Microsoft to Join the Search Marketing War?

A lot of professionals are playing down the new directions Microsoft is taking and everybody loves to trash Microsoft. When you’re tops, you’re a big target.

But any site owner who writes off Microsoft as just another marketing channel is making a mistake – the same mistake many have made before – underestimating Microsoft.

The company has enough capital to buy the world, it has the technical expertise to retro-engineer existing search engine constructions and implement improvements that will make business life easier for any site owner.

It’s a big job, but you got to put your money on Microsoft. Google and Yahoo own search marketing today.

But there’s a new player in town. Microsoft.

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What's In It For Me?

"What's in it for me?" is the underlying question when people are deciding whether to respond to your advertisements, read your content, follow your calls to action, take part at your site, or link to it. Web hosting provider explains. Answer that question for them, and you're more likely to get what you want.

Get people to respond to your advertisements- web hosting provider tips

People are bombarded with advertisements. You can increase the chances of yours getting responses with these steps:

• Know your target audience, and tailor your ads for them.
• Advertise at sites where your target audience is likely to be. If you're bidding on keywords, choose long tail keywords to reach a more specific audience.
• Get their attention with a headline that focuses on the benefits of your product or service.
• Make your ads specific, clear, and concise.
• If space allows, include your unique selling point, which will answer the question of how people benefit from choosing you over the competition.
• Provide contact information and a call to action.

Get people to read your content

You've got people at your site now. You want to keep them there until they've followed your call to action and made a purchase or whatever you want them to do.

From headings to sentences, draw them in. Focus on what's in it for your readers. If you're selling something, keep your target audience in mind as you focus on the benefits, special offers, and what makes your products or services different. If you're providing information that you want people to read, tailor your information to their needs and wants.

In addition to writing for your audience, write to them. When you use the words you and your, your content becomes more focused on what's in it for them, and readers connect more with it.

Explain the why behind your statements. Why will your readers benefit from the product or service? Why are you the person or company to obtain it from?

Get people to follow your calls to action

You'll have more people following your calls to action if they see what they want. Provide different ways to navigate your site and search for content. For example, offer options to search for products by price, size, color, use, and various features. Make your site visitors feel that you've tailored your site to their needs and preferences.

Include information about benefits and features with your products and services, on the same page or just a click away. Buyers' guides, user reviews, and ratings fall in this category.

Draw attention to special or exclusive offers, such as discounts or membership programs. Link to related products or include a "You may also be interested in these products" list.

Make changes to your content and calls to action and track which ones are more successful.

Get people to take part at your site

You have a a forum, a wiki, or a blog, or you have a site where readers leave reviews or other comments. Why should other people take part? Give them reasons:

• Provide valuable content. If they benefit from it, they may want to get the good feeling that comes from giving back.
• Help them identify themselves. Usernames, customizable profile pages, and ways to view each person's contributions all give people a sense of identity at the site.
• Keep the site clean. Allow different points of view, even critical ones, but remove spam, rudeness, and other problem content. Your audience will have more confidence in you and will be able to take part more easily.
• Offer a way for some members to stand out, such as post count indications, user titles, or even a different-colored username. A little bit of prestige can go a long way.

Get people to link to your site

What's in it for other people if they link to your website? Common reasons for linking to other sites:

• Your site has content that's valuable to visitors at the other site.
• The person linking to your site found your content valuable or interesting and wants to share it with other people at a forum or social media site. They may want to impress their peers with what they found.
• You're providing content for the other site, and a link to your site is in that content.
• You're paying for the inbound link.
• You're providing a reciprocal link.

Quality content is key for the first three reasons. If you've established yourself as an authority on the topic and have quality content, the links will keep coming when people discover your content. For the other reasons, you may need to contact other webmasters. When you do, focus on what's in it for them.

Related blog articles

Online advertising and targeting

• Identify Your Target Audience
• How Behavioral Targeting Can Work for You
• How to Write Successful Pay-Per-Click Ads

Search engine optimization

• SEO and Copywriting: How to Attract Both Search Engines and People
• The Short and Long Tail of Keyword Use
• Get Inbound Links from Authority Sites

Website content

• Make Every Page a Sales Page
• Writing for the Web Versus Writing for Print
• How Do Your Landing Pages Work?
• How to Become a Known Niche Authority

Persuasion and motivation

• The New Art of Persuasion: What Worked Before Won’t Work Now
• Motivate Website Visitors to Buy
• How to Generate and Use Social Media Buzz

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The (Very Near) Future of Search Engines:

Is Your Website Ready for This?

In just a few short years we’ve seen the web evolve from geekdom to grandma’s shopping arena. The changes that have taken place in search engines in just the past few years have improved the relevance of SERPs, delivering higher quality search results and many more search options.

Web Hosting Provider Explains The Advance of Local Search

Local businesses, legal and medical practices and community associations aren’t trying to reach web users in Vladivostok. They’re using the web to pull foot traffic to the brick and mortar on Main Street – using websites as online billboards.

That’s why many sites offer a “Find a Provider” feature. If you’re looking for a local optometrist, simply enter your zip code and up pops a list of local eye specialists. These eyeball professionals pay a fee for inclusion on the “Find a Provider” list, a nice secondary revenue stream to further monetize your site. Also, exclusive brand sites offer a “Find the Nearest Store” feature. This option is a great marketing tool for well-branded retailers that employ multi-channel marketing – companies like LL Bean, Patagonia, Lands’ End and other deep pockets retailers.

Web hosting provider explains - Local search is already a function of key search engines. All users do is enter the location – a town, state, county or region. And to pick up this local search traffic, all a site owner has to do is add the name of his/her community and state and today’s search engines handle the rest.

Local search is SOP for web users who are comparison shopping before heading to the box store to make the purchase (Just enter your zip code and we’ll have the order waiting for you at the store!!!), and for families new to a community looking for a family dentist, pediatrician, accountant, lawyer and other service providers in their new home towns.

The Blended Search

Part of the search engine’s evolution is its ability to conduct a variety of searches based on parameters set by the search engine user. Today, unless you specify a product name, geographic place or some other qualifier, search engines default to universal search mode. Put up every reference that even comes close to the users’ queries. Google can deliver 16.5 million links for the keywords “plasma TV” and you know that, of those 16.5 million links, most are utterly superfluous to your search for local deals on plasma TVs in your region. A white paper on HDTV’s relationship to eyestrain isn’t exactly relevant to your search.

So, the search engine of tomorrow, which is today on the web, will produce a blended search, automatically deleting links that it intuits lack relevance while increasing SERP’s relevance through the delivery of links to local outlets. As such, search engines will not only deliver relevant links, it will recommend outlets, whether those outlets are actual retail outlets or online outlets based on product name, type and other user-defined search parameters.

Search Engines as Content Providers

It’s already begun and the technology to aggregate content in a variety of formats for display on SERPs is already being used by Google.

Check out the SERP for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.” The first two links have a “Watch video” option. This enables search engine users to view the cool video developed for this cool song right on the results page.

Get the point? Right now, web users can access content directly from the SERP – no link involved.

And shortly, search engines will be able to collect content in Flash, JavaScript, PowerPoint and every other media format, super-simplifying the user’s search for goods, services and information. Just click and view the link without leaving the SERP.

This growing practice is, of course, a double-edged sword. On the downside, the ability to access site content without actually visiting the site could put a serious hurtin’ on sales when search engines do the comparison shopping for the web user. On the other hand, this technology provides the opportunity to present more information to the web user than the current content contained in an HTML description tag. A commercial site can use the technology to display the sale du jour. A DV how-to manual is just a click away, providing another potential point of sale.

Expectations of Increased Functionality

As search engines grow in sophistication, expectations of users to see expanded functionality will follow. Here’s an example: You own a restaurant. You also have a website that displays the menu, talks about wedding receptions and other benefits of eating at your restaurant.

Now, a user logs on. Doesn’t want to book a wedding reception and doesn’t want to slog through the daily specials menu. All s/he wants is a map to the restaurant. A quick click on print map and that user has what she needs without wasting time. And you, the restaurant owner, have a new customer coming in. That’s an obvious example of the increased functionality new search engine technology delivers. You may have a “Print Map” feature on site, but why visit the site when all the user has to do is click on a Print Map button?

Future Content

Tomorrow’s SERPs will look different from today’s universal SERPs. With blended search, a Google page might contain links to user reviews of a car model, a list of local car dealers selling that car model, a link to the car manufacturer’s huge, glitzy web site right next to a local classified placed by someone selling the make and model you’re looking for two towns over.

Search engines will also deliver more directory listings, association membership lists, social media, local/national/international classified ads, local newspaper content and a lot more video. In fact, just this morning a piece on CNN expressed concern about the cable industry’s ability to meet the growing demand for bandwidth with the expansion of heavy content like videos, audios and movies to websites and search engines – a topic for another day.

The Continuing Evolution of Search Engines

Not only will search engines display a variety of media in a variety of formats from a variety of sources, tomorrow’s search engine will learn user preferences based on past search experience, providing truly dynamic search results that differ from user to user. This “intuitive” ability will deliver more diversity to the user while increasing the actual usefulness of the link or the “Play video” button that keeps the user on the SERP.

It’s time to move ahead of the pack. You can create a nice, 30-second DV that’ll play when you upload to YouTube. And from YouTube (now owned by Google, don’t forget), your DV can be played whenever your site link appears on SERPs. Think of it as a quick introduction to you, your store, prices or whatever it is you want to highlight.

Think of it as yet another means of reaching your customers.

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Forget Pay-per-Click:

Pay for Performance - A Marketing Discussion in Web Hosting Blog

There’s been a lot of mumbling and grumbling within the search engine marketing sector about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which, until now, has been the small business owners’ best bet when it came to paid advertising. (Also, PPC has been one of the few options available to small business owners who lack the resources to generate organic search results.)

And so, pay per click programs proliferate. The best known is, no doubt, Google’s AdWords program – those blue skyscrapers you see stacked on the right side of Google SERPs and participant site pages. Let your web hosting provider explain - Site owners bid on keywords through the AdWords program. The more popular the keyword, the higher the cost per click. So, if you’re in the taxidermy business “taxidermy” is going to be one of the most popular keywords (query words) search engine users will enter in to the search box. As such, you might pay a buck per click for all those taxidermy aficionados who click on to your site to see what’s stuffin’.

On the other hand, you might only pay five cents for the keyword phrase “dead stuffed animals.” That’s because a lot more people will search taxidermy before dead stuffed animals.

On the other hand, you eliminate a lot of the competition, and therefore cost of PPCs using less popular keywords. Sure, fewer people will search “dead stuffed animals,” but those that do will see your link at the top of page one of the SERPs. Fewer viewers, more click-throughs.

Yeah, But What About Click Fraud?

(dripping with sarcasm) Gee, what a surprise. You mean some black hat chip jockey figured out a way to commit PPC fraud? Well, if the bad guys can hack the Department of Health and Human Services, creating a few lines of script to automatically click on the PPCs that appear on their 200 individual sites should take about five minutes.

There are numerous variations of click fraud – everything from competitor sites clicking on your links until you go broke to links that appear on obscure sites generated in some country you never hear of.

There are plenty of click fraud scams that can be implemented by a single individual. And when you think of a PPC advert as cash (it is every time someone clicks on it) it’s like leaving your wallet on the front seat of your unlocked car. It’s an easy means for competitors to subvert the PPC advertising model.

Search engines have great power and several have been caught committing what some refer to as click fraud by placing PPC links on pages that have no context to the subject of the ad. Site owners have found their PPC links on foreign language sites originating in former Soviet states – places where English isn’t even the spoken language. Organized groups pay “clickers” to click on PPC links – a penny a click. Not much dough but in some places, that’s considered a white collar job.

There are numerous click fraud detectors available, all pretty much work on the same principles: identifying sources of clicks, unusual spikes in number of clicks from a particular region and so on. The problem with this detection software is that it informs you of the fraud after the piggy bank has been cleaned out. Google does provide refunds when fraud is detected and you file a formal complaint, however. And, this search engine giant does have click fraud protection in place.

A big selling point of PPC ads is that you, the small business owner, only pay when a web user actually clicks on your link. Okay, that gets a visitor to your site, you’ve been charged for the click but the visitor doesn’t like the look of your home page and splits. No sale – and you’re out another 50 cents.

With PPC you’re more susceptible to click fraud, you’re constantly running analyses to see which ads are pulling and which aren’t and even if you get and pay for that click-through, there’s no assurance you’ll make a sale.

Pay-Per-Performance

Using the PPC advertising model, new site owners had to set aside a lot of marketing dollars to ensure that they could keep up their PPC click programs during the lean months when lots clicked, few bought.

The PPC model delivered hit-or-miss results and, if a link wasn’t pulling all you could do is tear it down and replace it. Try, try again.

Pay-per-performance ensures that, not only is your PPP ad properly placed, it also comes free unless the visitor performs a desired action – like buying something. This is a great way to see which PPP ads work and which should be jettisoned. If people are clicking but not buying, no cost to you. But it does provide some useful information about the structuring of your PPC ads.

How To Get Started

There are two ways you can go with PPP adverts. You can go through an agency that specializes in placing PPP banners and other links. These services can be pricey, however, because every placement site is handpicked by a human to be compatible with the topicality of your site.

You end up with more highly-qualified visitors but you pay.

A less expensive way to go is through the use of PPP search engines, more of which are becoming available because of the problems inherent in PPC advertising.

Several of the more popular PPP search engines include Findwhat.com, RocketLinks.com, GoTo.com and Yahoo’s Overture. Most of these PPP search engines require a minimum deposit of $25 or $50 to activate your account and get your ads placed on the SERPs

Pay-per-performance banner ads and other PPP links can also be placed automatically, keeping expensive banner ads paying their way. Two companies worth a look are PennyWeb.com and ValueClick.com for this hybrid PPP placement service.

Guarantees?

No way, man. No PPC or PPA (pay-per-action) or PPP marketing program will guarantee anything. How can they? You could be posting unreadable links, or offering products at huge margins. There are no guarantees in any paid marketing.

That’s why it’s essential that, as a small site owner, you do two things everyday:

First, check for signs of click fraud. If you don’t know what to look for (it’s pretty easy to spot and automated click fraud software triggers alarms when someone’s fiddling with your account), hire someone who knows what s/he’s doing with regard to SEO and SEM.

Second, start keeping a history of metrics – analyses of performance regardless of what “pay-per-program” you employ. Even though you’re paying for action, for performance, you’re paying extra for that more highly-qualified lead so make sure you’re getting your money’s worth – the cost-per-acquisition (CPA) factor.

One last thought. As you get to know the W3 landscape more intimately, consider switching from performance-based ads to PPC. You’ll know what pulls and what doesn’t, you’ll have the software or guardian services in place to make sure you aren’t being victimized by click fraud and you’ll save on marketing costs.

The fact is, advertising works on the web. It’s the fastest growing promotion segment, beating out TV, radio, print and billboards in percentage of growth. So, knowing that marketing is going to cost you, be smart. Start by paying for performance only to learn what works and how the whole PPC industry works.

Learn the hazards and learn from your successes. Then, when you’ve put all of the pieces together, switch over to PPC ads and save some money. Or, if those performance-based ads are more than paying for themselves (you’re lucky) simply add PPC ads to the mix – another marketing channel to reach more buyers.

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